Gate of Ivrel

CHAPTER IX

IVREL WAS ALL the horizon now, snow-crowned and perfect amid the jagged rubble of the Kath Vrej range, anomaly among mountains. The sky was blue and still stained with sunrise in the east, as much as they could see of the sky in that direction. A single star still remained high and to the left of Ivrel’s cone.

It was beautiful, this place upon the north rim of Irien. It was hard to remember the evil of it.

“Another day,” said Morgaine, “perhaps yet one more camp, will set us there.” And when Vanye looked at her he saw no yearning in her eyes such as he had thought to see, only weariness and misery.

“Is it then Ivrel you seek?” Roh asked.

“Yes,” she said. “As it always was.” And she looked at him. “Chya Roh, this is the limit of Koris. We will bid you goodbye here. There is no need that you take us farther.”

Roh frowned, looking up at her. “What is there that you have to gain at Ivrel?” he said. “What is it you are looking for?”

“I do not think that is here or there with us, Roh. Goodbye.”

“No,” he said harshly, and when she would have urged Siptah past, ignoring him: “I ask you, Morgaine kri Chya, by the welcome we gave you, I ask you. And if you ride past me I will follow you until I know what manner of thing I have helped, whether good or evil.”

“I cannot tell you,” she said. “Except that I will do no harm to Koris. I will close a Gate, and you will have seen the last of me. I have told you everything in that, but you still do not understand. If I wished to leave you the means to raise another Thiye, I might pause to explain, but it would take too long and I should hate to leave that knowledge behind me.”

Roh gazed up at her, no better comforted than before, and then turned his face toward Vanye. “Kinsman,” he said, “will you take me up behind?”

“No,” said Morgaine.

“I do not have her leave,” Vanye said.

“You will slow us, Roh,” said Morgaine, “and that could be trouble for us.”

Roh thrust his hands into the back of his belt and scowled up at her. “Then I will follow,” he said.

Morgaine turned Siptah for the northeast, and Vanye with heavy heart laid heels to his own horse, Roh trudging behind. Though they would go easily, wanting to spare the horses, they were passing beyond the bounds of Koris and of Chya, and there was no longer safety for Roh or for any man afoot. He could follow, until such time that they came under attack of beasts or men of Hjemur. Morgaine would let him die before she would let him delay her.

So must he. In a fight he dared not have his horse encumbered. In flight, his oath insisted he must keep to Morgaine’s side, and he could not do that carrying double, nor risk tiring the horse before the hour of her need.

“Roh,” he pleaded with his cousin, “it will be the end of you.”

Roh did not answer him, but hitched his gear to a more comfortable position on his shoulder, and walked. Being Chya-reared, Roh would be able to walk for considerable distances and at considerable pace, but Roh must know also that he stood almost certainly to lose his life.

Had it been his own decision, Vanye thought, he would have ridden far ahead at full gallop, so that Roh must realize that he could not keep up and abandon this madness; but it was not his to decide. Morgaine walked her horse. That was the pace she set; and at noon rest Roh was able to overtake them and share food with them—this grace she granted without stinting; but he fell behind again when they set out.

But for knowing where they were, the land was still fair for some considerable distance; but when pines began to take the place of lowland trees, and they climbed into snowy ground, then Vanye suffered for Roh and looked back often to see how he fared.

“ Liyo,” he said then, “let me get off and walk a time, and he will ride. That can tire the horse no more.”

“His choice to come was his affair,” she said. “If trouble comes on us unexpectedly, I want you, not him, beside me. No. Thee will not.”

“Do you not trust him, liyo? We slept in Ra-koris in his keeping, and there was chance enough for him to do us harm.”

“That is so,” she said, “and of men in Andur-Kursh, I trust Roh next to you; but thee knows how little trust I have to extend; and I have less of charity.”

And then he fell to thinking of the night and day ahead, which he had yet to serve, and that she had said that she would die. That saddened him, so that for a time he did not think of Roh, but reckoned that there was something weighing on her mind.

She spoke of the same matter, late in the afternoon, when the horses had struck easier going along a ridge. Crusted snow cracked under them, and their breath hung in frosty puffs even in sunlight, but it was an easy place after the rocks and ice that they had passed.

“Vanye,” she said, “thee will find it difficult to pass from Hjemur after I am gone. It would be best if thee had a place to go to. What will thee do? Nhi Erij will not forgive thee for what I have done.”

“I do not know what I will do,” he said miserably. “There is Chya, there is still Chya, if only Roh and I both come through this alive.”

“I wish thee well,” she said softly.

“Must you die?” he asked her.

Her gray eyes went strangely gentle. “If I have the choice,” she said, “I shall not. But if I do, then thee is not free. Thee knows what thee has to do: kill Thiye. And perhaps then Roh might serve thee well: so I let him follow. But if I live, all the same, I shall pass the Gate of Ivrel, and in passing, close it. Then there will be an end of Thiye all the same. When Ivrel closes, all the Gates in this world must die. And without the Gates, Thiye cannot sustain his unnatural life: he will live until this body fails him, and be unable to take another. So also with Liell, and with every evil thing that survives by means of the Gates.”

“And what of you?”

She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. “I do not know where I shall be. Another place. Or scattered, as the men were at Kath Svejur. I shall not know until I pass the Gate where I can make it take me. That is my task, to seal Gates. I shall go until there are no more—and I shall not know that, I fear, until I step out the last one and find nothing there.”

He tried to grasp the thing she told him, could not imagine, and shivered. He did not know what to say to her, because he did not know what it meant.

“Vanye,” she said, “you have drawn Changeling. You have a proper fear of it.”

“Aye,” he acknowledged. Loathing was in his voice. Her gray eyes reckoned him up and down, and she cast a quick look over her shoulder at Roh’s distant figure.

“I will tell thee,” she said softly, “if something befall me, it could be that thee would need to know. Thee does not need to read what is written on the blade. But it is the key. Chan wrote it upon the blade for fear that all of us would die, or that it would come to another generation of us—hoping that with that, Ivrel still might be sealed. It is to be used at Ra-hjemur, if thee must: its field directed at its own source of power would effect the ruin of all the Gates here. Or cast back within the Gate itself, the true Gate, it would be the same: unsheath it and hurl it through. Either way would be sufficient.”

“What are the writings on it?”

“Enough that could give any able to read them more knowledge of Gates than I would wish to have known. That is why I carry it so close. It is indestructible save by Gates. I dare not leave it. I dare not destroy it. Chan was mad to have made such a thing. It was too great a chance. We all warned him that qujalin knowledge was not for us to use. But it is made, and it cannot be unmade.”

“Save by the Witchfires themselves.”

“Save by that.”

And after they had ridden a distance: “Vanye. Thee is a brave man. I owe it to thee to tell thee plainly: if thee uses Changeling, as I have told thee to do, thee will die.”

The cold seeped inward, self-knowledge. “I am not a brave man, liyo.”

“I think otherwise. Can thee hold the oath?”